Unusual Dive Buddies

Here is my dive report from Saturday. Hope you enjoy. I've changed some names for the sake of privacy. But if you do figure out who I'm talking about it would be nice ifyou could keep it discreet.

Chuck Tribolet had reserved the entire park for 30 divers and we were lucky enough to take part in the event. In addition to the wonderful diving, we met some unusual people. First off, we were tripled up with **** who is a staffmember at Blue Water Diving - a Sunnyvale shop. Unfortunately, our cars were parked next to one another other, so I was treated to the sight of ****changing. Basically this guy is a bit on the stout side. While talking to me face to face, **** strips down and keeps talking to me as if nothing unusual had happened. I thought he was wearing some unusual bathing shorts, so I had to take a closer look. Ends up he was stripped down to his tighty whities. Mark had been smart enough to look away from the get go. My retinas are still burning from that encounter.

On our second dive, we were quadrupled up with an older dive instructor. All four of us wanted to dive the swim through -- which is about 40+ feet long and 30 feet deep. The instructor claimed that in his crazier youth, he had free-dived the swim through. Anyways, halfway through the dive, I turn around to see that the dive instructor was wearing a starfish on his head. When I indicated that he had a starfish on his head, he cocked his head to the side and shrugged. I laughed so loud that Mark could hear my laughter from afar. The dive instructor proceeded to wear the starfish for the rest of the dive. I saw a sun star the size of a bicycle wheel crawling along the sand. I pointed to it and then pointed to his head and gave him the OK signal. He intelligently declined to put the sunstar on his head. Later, the dive instructor told me he almost put an abalone shell on his head to protect his head from the overhead environment during the swim through. That would have been a sight.

As for the diving, it was great! The highlights were a huge vermilion rockfish, and an octopus on the gravelly pebble bottom that tried to pretend it was a rock.

White Water Diving

Mark and I were at Point Lobos last Saturday (a week after a diver drowned at thepark). We saw a gigantic 2 foot+ long copper rockfish surrounded by 4-5 smaller copper rockfish. My guessis that it was a female holding court. Have you ever seen this behavior?Also, the dive was very unusual in that we had 60-80 foot viz that day. We took advantage by swimming out much further than we normally do. And got ourselves into a little trouble. We ended up on the other side of these wash rocks. Because we were halfway through our air supply, I decided that we should take a shortcut through the wash rocks. Boy, was that a mistake. We slowly went from a depth of 75 feet to a narrow surge channel only 6 feet shallow. As I slowly pulled myself through the channel, hand over hand, fighting to slow my breath, I noticed that the place was bursting with life -- the only limiting factor was the real estate on the rocks. Giant green anemones were crowding each other out like in some absinthe laced dream. As I held onto the bull kelp, I thought to myself - this is really nice scenery, I wish I weren't scared to death so I could appreciate it more. After Mark and I surfaced and changed, we climbed to the top of the hill to see what we had just swum through. The channel we swam through was the gnarliest stretch in the wash rocks. The white wash never subsided once. One would never have thought adiver could make it through.As I said, there was a guy who got tangled in the kelp at Point Lobos last weekend, and drowned. Before thislast Saturday, I never thought I could ever get into such a panicked state and drown like that guy. Well,even a few minutes after the surge channel, I was still out of breath, and felt I couldn't get enoughair from my regulator. As we were crawling over the kelp, still panting for breath, I can easily imaginespitting out the regulator and losing it. Of course, my state of mind was nowhere near that level of panic,but I can see how such a situation could arise.

Monet Exhibit & Shopping

I had a little excursion with some new friends from work. Melissa, is a former graduate student at Oxford. I really admire her funky sense of style. Her insight into Diabetes (the livelihood at the company I work for) makes me think she would be excellent as our team's marketing manager. Instead, she is highly underemployed in Artwork and Packaging. Hila, is an electrical engineer who also work on the product I am working on. She has a really gentle demeanor. Nevertheless, she is quite adventurous, having travelled a lot and even spending half a year in India. I have really enjoyed our chats when we have gone out on walks.

When I walked by Melissa's desk one day, I noticed her art posters. It was then I realized that we shared a common interest in art. From the way she talked about museums and artists, I knew that her knowledge was deep, and that she was someone I could talk to when it came to art appreciation. Perhaps that was the reason why she invited me for a art and shopping excursion yesterday. There was a "Monet in Normandie" exhibition at the Legion of Honor. I decided to invite Hila along for the shopping bit, since she didn't seem as interested in the museum.

At the art exhibit, it was uncanny how much Melissa and I connected when it came to art appreciation. We had different perspectives on the works of art, but we could both understand each other's perspectives. We followed Monet in his art career from his early days in Le Havre, to his later days painting the rock archways at Entretat. Finally, his artwork became the recognizable works everyone knows. I revisited the painting of two women striding a top a hill full of poppies that usually resides at the Art Institute. It was one of the crowning glories, if not the crowning glory, in the whole exhibit, and it was the sole artwork on loan from the Chicago museum. Perhaps coming quite close to the effect of that work was the amazing painting of Poplars. A work that Monet was so dedicated to that he purchased the group of poplars from being demolished in order to finish the work. I also loved the aforementioned rock archways of Entretat.

There was no time to appreciate the beautiful hill top setting of the museum overlooking the entrance to the Bay, before we were off to meet Hila at Union Square for an afternoon of shopping. Our first stop was the Ann Taylor, Post St. where we had adjacent changing rooms, so that we could admire or offer suggestions with regards to our clothing choices. Melissa really came out on top with her purchases. She got a versatile black wrap dress with which she intended to impress a former crush in England, where she intended to spend her vacation. She also got a nice pair of black suit pants. Hila got a beige corduroy fishtail backed skirt, and a red wrap blouse. I got a purple wrapped sleeveless shirt and a gold/beige t-shirt for $19.99.

Our next stop was Lush, an all natural beauty supply store where Melissa used to work. She convinced us to try the charcoal soap, and the sea salt shampoo that has the most bizarre consistency I've ever encountered. It feels like some condiment that has formed a hard crust over top.

Our last stop was through Macy's, the highest end Macy's I've ever been to. Macy's is usually considered a lower tier department store, but this particular location was full of "7 for all Mankind", Marc Jacobs and more obscure finds. I punctuated the tour through the precious clothes racks with ... "I can get that from Forever 21 for $2.00!" and delighted in contrasting it with the actual price tags which usually amounted in the several hundreds of dollars.

We reached the shoe floor, where we found out that many brand names were on clearance sale for around $20.00. When we fionally got out of there, we had only each purchased one pair of $20.00 shoes because the harried employees couldn't find anything.

All in all a memorable evening. I'm sure we will repeat it soon.

South Monestary, and The Land of the Sealions

We celebrated Mark's birthday weekend with a couple of nice dives.

The first dive was at South Monestary. Monestary is famous for its wicked entries and exits, but yesterday, it was as mild as can be, with little ankle biter waves, and with the ocean a deep California blue.

The first thing we see is a dead adult sea otter in the kelp. It was scary and sad to see the specimen -- almost 4 feet long, doubled over in half, with a blond head. In the news today, there was mention of a rash of sea otter deaths, possibly from red tide(?). We took our time meandering on the edge of the kelp forest without ever getting deeper than 40 feet, unlike North Monestary that plunges into the Monterey Submarine Canyon. The life and topography here was almost on par with Point Lobos (Monestary does reside side by side with the State Park). The area was replete with featherduster worms, and psychelic sponges. So plentiful were the sponges that the decorator crabs, that usually cover their carapaces with vegetable growth, were covered with ugly bulbous white sponges. Mark saw a cotton candy pink sponge that looked like it was a modern Henry Moore sculpture. Water was warm, at least 56 degrees, which probably explains why we finished our longest dive in Monterey yet: 1h10 minutes. Viz was 25-30 feet with abundant krill in the shallows.

The second dive was at Breakwater. Breakwater is well known for being a beginner site where all the scuba classes are conducted. The reason why we did our dive at Breakwater was because I needed to get tank fills. We do it very often, however, I still think Breakwater is a world class site. We decided to try swimming to the end of the wharf where a colony of sea lions are known to reign supreme.

Descending was an unusual experience. I think there must have been red tide in the waters. The first 20 feet of descent was like descending through reddish orange tea water. The visibility was 2 -3 feet, with Mark and me barely able to discern each others lights. Swimming towards the wall, the rock jetty burst upon us before we knew it. Below 20 feet, the viz opened up to 20 feet. But it was very gloomy and dark. Mark and I had to illuminate our way with our primary lights. But boy, were we ever rewarded. The fish were out in force, and could scarcely move out of our way. I think that the fish thought it was night. As we neared the end of the wharf, sea lions kept buzzing us and running way. Finally, as I held onto Mark's arm in fear, we reached the land of the sea lions. 4 large juveniles, one almost Mark's length, swam around us in circles. We surfaced, not due to lack of air, but because Mark kept bumping his head against the rocks (the viz was very, very bad as we neared the beach). Our surface swim back was treated to 100 brown pelicans flying overhead.

Upon exiting the water, we ran into some old friends who were showing their parents around. They had just visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium to check out the baby Great white shark newly installed at the Outer Bay exhibit.

Gatsby

I decided to get out of my comfort zone this weekend. On the invitation of my coworker, Hila, we went to The Gatsby with her husband and some of her friends. The Gatsby is a 1920's - 1940's costume party held in Oakland every year.

I don't really enjoy putting on costumes, and I have never been into role playing, so I already knew it wasn't going to be my schpiel. When I went to Renaissance Faire in college, I had a lot of fun, but I couldn't imagine spewing old English to passersby every day on my summer vacation like some of the youngsters I saw there. However, Hila showed me some tantalizing pictures from the Gatsby website (see below for some sample images). Furthermore, we had a lot of fun thrift store shopping for a vintage hat during lunch. After some coworkers and I helped Hila select a florid pink hat, and a pink silk flapper dress, I decided that I didn't want to miss out on the all the fun of dressing-up and shopping for vintage, so I took a leap and tried it.

The Gatsby: http://www.artdecosociety.org/about/events/Gatsby/index.htm

Upon arrival, the Gatsby was just as elegant as it was in the photographs. Beautifully renovated, priceless vintage autos laid out on the perfectly manicured green grass. Ladies, all got up in marcel curls, gorgeous silk gowns and jaunty hats strolled the grounds with champagne glasses in hand. People laid out extravagant picnics, gorgeously laid out with roses, vintage china, and finger foods. All in all I was very glad to have come. And it made ever the more thankful to come home and hang out with the Beh :)